How To Set Up Your Blog’s Google Plus Brand Page

I don’t use Google Plus that much. With Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon (what else am I forgetting?) it’s just one.more.thing. However, all that aside, it’s important from a branding perspective to have a presence on these networks where possible. Since Google Plus recently added the feature to create pages for a business or brand, we thought it would be a good time to give you a tutorial on how to set up one for your own blog. I’ll walk you through how I set up a basic page in about 10 minutes.

Setting Up Your Google Plus Page

This tutorial assumes that you already have a Google+ account. We won’t go into the basics of setting up your personal Google+ account here.

Navigate to your main Google+ account page

Once you’re on your main account page, head to the right sidebar. At the very bottom, under “Hangouts,” is a link for “Create A Google+ Page.” Click it.

Select the type of page you’re creating

This is very similar to setting up a Facebook fan page. Tell Google what sort of page you’re creating. I chose “other” for my personal blog. Enter the name of your page (your blog name), your blog URL, set viewing preferences (if you have adult content or material inappropriate for kids, limit to over age 18) and click “Create.”

Customize your profile

Now you can give your page a tagline. If you have one for your blog, use that – consistency is good for branding! Also upload your blog button or header image or other photo that you’d like to use. Make sure it’s fairly high resolution. You’ll note at the top of the screen, Google tells you that you are now using Google+ as your brand page and not as your personal account. Again, similar to Facebook’s feature where you can toggle back and forth between yourself and your page). Hit “Continue.”

Share your page

Now you can share your newly-created page with any circles that you specify. Google makes this pretty easy with dropdown menus and nice prompts.

Socialize your page

Your Google Plus page is now complete. Google gives you several different options on socializing your page. From this screen, you can add blog posts, pictures, and video. You can get a Google+ badge for your blog. You can get the URL for your Google+ page to add to email signatures, etc. I started simply by adding my latest blog post.

Fill your page in with some content

As I said above, I started by just adding my most recent blog posts. Adding posts to Google+ is {ahem} eerily similar to posting on Facebook – but I do like Google’s interface. It’s pretty intuitive, and it lets you choose what photo thumbnail to include with the post. From the same dialogue box, you can choose with what circles you’ll share the post with.

That’s it! There are many other things that you can do with your Google+ blog page, but this should get you started. Take time to explore and familiarize yourself with this new tool in your blog-branding toolkit!

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About Alina Thomas

Alina is a Northern Virginia wedding photographer based out of Leesburg, VA. She has a passion for arts and design, and strives to express it through her work. She is creative at heart and loves nothing more than sharing her knowledge in photography with other Virginia wedding photographers on her blog each week. Alina loves being a new mom to her first-born and spending time with her husband who helps her run her businesses. Please feel free to follow her on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Google+.

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Loved your tutorial. There are some really good ones also at http://empowermentnetwork.com/tamarayoungmarketing Search for G+ and most importantly always upload good content and enjoy the blogging process with all the social media platforms… Choose to learn something new everyday. thesitgirls.com is a terrific place to learn.

ok, si i went backwards and am now realizing that I created a personal page and I blog or send out my link to my blog from there- I also have people in my circle etc…if I make a page will it transfer that info over or should I just keep my personal page as my page even though it lists my name and not my blog?

Great tutorial – thanks! Finally got myself on Google+ yesterday and couldn’t figure out how to build a page so this was kismet. But seriously, i’ve reached my saturation point on social sharing sites! I can’t keep up!

With so many networking sites to use in advertising your brand, Google+ seems to be redundant enough. However, there’s also a possibility to meet new people who can be part of your growing network. In the end, there’s no harm in trying it out, right?

I don’t think there’s a capability YET to link a brand page to Twitter or Facebook (honestly not sure as I did just set mine up this week!). But considering how much of this they’re modeling after Facebook’s fan pages, I imagine it’s only a matter of time.

Here’s what I can’t figure out…Facebook has it set up so that my fan page can ‘like’ other fan pages. Google+ doesn’t seem to allow this? Is that right? I wonder how you can build a following within Google+ but without constantly linking to that page from your blog/twitter etc.

You can navigate Google+ as your brand page, but I haven’t played around with whether you can “like” other fan pages as your brand ( a feature I love about Facebook). I think the only way to build your following within Google+ right now is to promote your brand page to your personal circles. Not ideal – but in my case, only bloggers follow me on Google+ (family and friends are not that tech savvy) so it’s a natural play that I can do that. Not so for everyone, though.

I don’t know if it’s here to stay or not – I just know that I fought Twitter tooth and nail at first, and then once I spent some time on it, realized I was being a brat for not getting on sooner 🙂 Whether that happens with Google remains to be seen, right? 🙂

I just got an invite for the “real” me and have to admit I am reluctant. And scared. Because I keep my real self and my blog self separate and am afraid google will manage to connect me! I’ve been told that’s possible since I have gmail accounts for both. Honestly, I even wish I’d never started a facebook page for my blog… just one more thing to keep up with.

My question would be: is it worth it in terms of time invested and return, for you?

I would love to hear feedback from you after you have had your presence over there up and running for a while.

On Google+, the entire male population of India seems to have added me to their circles. Also a lot of men with really strange names who are not wearing shirts, and who are, well, kind of leering at me.

So…while I actually LIKE the LOOK of Google+ better, I don’t really run into a lot of folks I know over there. Maybe I’m moving in the wrong circles?

Interested in your opinion, and the opinions of my fellow SITStahs on this topic!

Glad you found it helpful! I will do a check in on this after the page has been up for a bit. I try to pick and choose where I spend my social networking time and thus far Google has not been high on the list. But I do believe that for bloggers who want to be “professional” about their work, it’s important to at least have a presence. What has been most helpful to me in the limited time I’ve spent is organizing my contacts into specific circles and sharing content with the circles that I think will be of most interest.